How do we think without thinking, seem to make choices in an instant--in the blink of an eye--that actually aren't as simple as they seem? Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others? Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology,...

In the years since the publication of Hawking's A Brief History of Time, readers have repeatedly told Hawking of their great difficulty in understanding some of the book's most important concepts. This is the reason for A Briefer History: his wish to make its content more accessible to readers--as well as to bring it up-to-date with the latest scientific observations and findings. Purely technical concepts, such as the mathematics of chaotic boundary...

Based on extensive research in both American and British archives, 1776 is the story of Americans in the ranks, men of every shape, size, and color, farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, no-accounts, and mere boys turned soldiers. And it is the story of the British commander, William Howe, and his highly disciplined redcoats who looked on their rebel foes with contempt and fought with a valor too little known. But it is the American commander-in-chief...

After Panama's tropical diseases and torrential rains kill thousands and stifle progress, the French and their Suez Canal champion Ferdinand de Lesseps flee the isthmus in defeat. Soon John Stevens--tenacious Great Northern Railroad builder--jumpstarts U.S. efforts. Making the conquest of malaria and yellow fever his first priority, Stevens helps Dr. William Gorgas eradicate disease-carrying mosquitoes. To remove dirt faster than mudslides can refill...

Thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor comes of age in 1982 in what is for him the sleepiest village in Worcestershire, experiencing first cigarettes, first kisses, and first deaths.

Still moping months after being dumped by her Arizona boyfriend Leo, fifteen-year-old Stargirl, a home-schooled free spirit, writes "the world's longest letter" to Leo, describing her new life in Pennsylvania.

It is 1952 and John Grady Cole and Billy Parham are working as ranch hands in New Mexico, not far from the proving grounds of Alamogordo and the cities of El Paso and Juarez. Their life is made up of trail drives and horse auctions and stories told by campfire light. They value that life all the more because they know it is about to change forever. The change comes when John Grady falls in love with a beautiful, ill-starred Mexican prostitute and...

Gregory Maguire returns to the world of Wicked and the land of Oz to follow the story of Liir, the adolescent boy left hiding in the shadows of the castle when Dorothy did in the Witch. A decade after the Witch has melted away, the young man Liir is discovered bruised, comatose, and left for dead in a gully. Shattered in spirit as well as in form, he is tended by the mysterious Candle, a foundling in her own right, until failed campaigns of his childhood...

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print.
One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that

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